And the baby has a baby

And the baby has a baby

When I started posting about this project, I just dove in. Eventually I’ll have to lay out exactly what I’m working on, and how I’m approaching the development of my artificial life forms. That will take some time. For now, have yet another post wherein I entirely fail to explain what’s going on. Over the …

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Ep 122: A tale of two books, part 1

Ep 122: A tale of two books, part 1

A tale of two books, part 1 After over 120 episodes, I thought it might be about time I introduce myself. So, today we have the story of how I fell in love with science. In this episode, I quote Walt Whitman’s poem “O Me! O Life!” with the line: “That the powerful play goes …

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Ep 121: Neural Turing machines

Ep 121: Neural Turing machines

Neural Turing machines Traditional programming methods are very good at solving problems that have simple rules to apply. They’re not so good when there are no simple rules that can be used, or when the rules are unknown. Neural networks are very good at problems that have complex or poorly defined rules, but not so …

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Ep 120: Long short-term memory

Ep 120: Long short-term memory

Long short-term memory In episode 117, I expressed some concern. It seemed that neural network implementations lacked a way of holding onto information over time. It turns out that the problem has been addressed by recurrent neural networks. Recurrent networks remember, though not very well. Today, we look at a modification of recurrent networks that …

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Ep 119: Robotic dreaming

Ep 119: Robotic dreaming

Robotic dreaming When you are awake, the world comes in at you through your senses. When you are asleep and dreaming, you create a world from within. An algorithm for deep learning, called “the wake sleep algorithm,” seems to capture this behavior. I referenced the previous episode in this one, so you may as well …

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Ep 118: Sleep and dreams

Ep 118: Sleep and dreams

Sleep and dreams There are two types of sleep: rapid eye movement or REM sleep, and non-rapid eye movement, or non-REM. Dreams happen during both types of sleep, and there is a well-established link between the amount and quality of sleep you get, and how well you recall and/or learn. Today, we take a little …

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Ep 117: Sleep, reset and brain wash

Ep 117: Sleep, reset and brain wash

Sleep, reset and brain wash While you are sleeping, your brain performs a reset of sorts. Synaptic weights that increased over the course of the day decrease while you are sleeping. At the same time, the fluid your brain floats in, rushes through your brain tissue, clearing out wastes that couldn’t be removed over the …

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